Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Description

Simple Heuristics in a Social World invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others. The social world is a terrain where humans and other animals compete with conspecifics for myriad resources, including food, mates, and status, and where rivals grant the decision maker little time for deep thought, protracted information search, or complex calculations. Yet, the social world also encompasses domains where social animals such as humans can learn from one another and can forge alliances with one another to boost their chances of success.According to the book's thesis, the undeniable complexity of the social world does not dictate cognitive complexity as many
scholars of rationality argue. Rather, it entails circumstances that render optimization impossible or computationally arduous: intractability, the existence of incommensurable considerations, and competing goals. With optimization beyond reach, less can be more. That is, heuristics--simple strategies for making decisions when time is pressing and careful deliberation an unaffordable luxury--become indispensible mental tools. As accurate as or even more accurate than complex methods when used in the appropriate social environments, these heuristics are good descriptive models of how people make many decisions and inferences, but their impressive performance also poses a normative challenge for optimization models. In short, the Homo socialis may prove to be a Homo heuristicus whose
intelligence reflects ecological rather than logical rationality.

Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Author Information

Ralph Hertwig is Director of the Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. He studies bounded and social rationality, experienced-based decision making, and the methodology of the social sciences. He was a recipient of the Heinz Heckhausen Young Scientist Prize and the Charlotte-und-Karl-Bühler Young Career Award.

Ulrich Hoffrage is Professor of Decision Theory and Risk, Graduate Business School of Economics (Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales; HEC), University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Contributors:

Contributors -- the ABC Research Group

The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) is an interdisciplinary research group founded in 1995 to study the psychology of bounded rationality and how good decisions can be made in an uncertain world.

Katarzyna AbramczukInstitute of Political StudiesPolish Academy of Sciences

Nathan BergSchool of Economic, Political, and Policy SciencesUniversity of Texas at Dallas

Guido BieleDepartment of PsychologyFaculty of Social SciencesUniversity of Oslo

Simple Heuristics in a Social World

Edited by Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group

Reviews and Awards

"Overall, Simple Heuristics in a Social World is both informative and inspiring. It will inform you of what is in the adaptive toolbox of social learning, stimulate your thinking about how best to model cognition and rationality, and inspire you with the sophisticated methodology of the social/ecological approach to cognition.
...this volume contains some excellent chapters that alone are worth your money for the whole book." --PsycCRITIQUES

"The book is big and it is dense with ideas, examples, analyses, and simulations."--Journal of Economic Psychology